


Dream a Little (Dream of Me)

by hikash0



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Attempted Brainwashing, Betrayal, Body Horror, Canon Compliant, Dream Manipulation, Dreams, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gaslighting, Gore, Healthy Father Figure-Son Relationship, Knife Wounds, M/M, Mental Torture, Obsessive Behavior, PTSD, Past Recreational Drug Use, Psychological Torture, Sleeping Pills, Tags Contain Spoilers, Thank God For Jim Gordon, a moderately descriptive scene of a face being peeled off, a moderately descriptive scene of multiple stab wounds, bruce loves jeremiah but now it's not so simple or so nice, jeremiah loves bruce, jim and alfred are bruce's dads I don't make the rules, past alcohol abuse, physical violence, post-insanity Jeremiah is his own warning, psychological violence, vague allusions to coming out, very brief moment of suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-02 17:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17267951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikash0/pseuds/hikash0
Summary: The problem is that since the bridges went down, Bruce has been dreaming.Of course his brain rearranges it vividly and liberally. Of course he dreams in twin shades of Valeska.---A series of dreamlike, and not so dreamlike interludes. Set immediately after the season four finale.





	Dream a Little (Dream of Me)

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags and take care. Nightmares ahead, Jeremiah is not nice.

stars fading but I linger on dear

still craving your kiss

i'm longin' to linger till dawn dear

just saying this 

_ -Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong _

\---

my love is as sharp as a needle in your eye. 

you must be such a fool to pass me by. 

_ -Morrissey  _

\---

 

There are things Bruce is afraid of. Things that do not start, but that do build and crest in a jagged pane of glass, a room overflowing twentyfold with reflections of a grinning, slipping, stapled smile. 

 

Things that have no end, but that do rise to infinite heights with the firm clap of a red gloved hand far up his shoulder, close to his neck, and the word ‘brother’ whispered with so much fervor it could never feel familial.

 

In between there are many small and quiet fears. The dark of course, the clatter of shining pearls in the muck of an alley, of course. 

 

Scars and staple marks, knife lines across his “pretty pink throat.” The screams of his loved ones, targeted because they stood within the range of Bruce's shadow. Blood gouting from a bullet wound.

 

Blood, coating his hands like his very own pair of red gloves.

 

That Bruce is afraid of himself goes without saying, but lately this is not the problem.

 

The problem is that since the bridges went down, Bruce has been dreaming.

 

\---

 

Wayne Manor has felt too big ever since his parents’ death. Alfred had worked hard to fill it. With the smell of his cooking, with banter and sport, training and sparring, nagging and shouting. Bruce even misses the petty arguments, because he felt the warmth of care behind the stern tones and saw love in Alfred’s eyes. Selina too had filled it in her own way. Had come and gone as she pleased like a feral cat, but Bruce always felt the house and his heart settle when she breezed through his window to lounged on the couch like she owned the place. When the Manor was filled, it came alive, more than a building it felt like the home he remembered. 

 

Now, such a vast dead space triggers Bruce’s paranoia mercilessly. 

 

He has never slept exactly well, but now his every night is spent scouring the city, bruising knuckles on the jawbones of criminals in a feverish determination to find Jeremiah. 

 

When Bruce does catch sleep it is not restful. Like a wild animal trained for scenting predators, Bruce wakes at the smallest sound. Often stricken with the feeling that someone is watching him. A presence of manic laughter waiting to dip a blade into his mouth and slice along the line of his lips. To remake his face in the image of a mad prophet so as to uncover just how similar they might be given one bad day. He only gets hour long snatches of rest at best, and the underside of his eyes bloom deep purple flowers of evidence against his face. 

 

His home has become an unsafe landscape of shadow. He sees Jeremiah in the hollowed out corners of the Manor, every window a portal from which he might emerge. Bruce knows better than anyone that no door can be bolted tightly enough to keep him out. He waits and waits for the inevitable twilight invasion, the longer the days stretch without incident the more fraught his nerves become until sleep during midnight hours is nigh impossible.  

 

Sunlight eases him, it lessens the likelihood of an ambush if only slightly so Bruce soon reverses his circadian rhythm. The gangs crawling for territory are most active at night, so Bruce becomes a nocturnal hunter. It is time when he can best aid Jim Gordon while searching for his own quarry.

 

At least he has Jim.

 

Jim Gordon. Bruce’s final saving grace. The rook blocking the white queen’s advance on the black knight. It’s stupidly poetic. Still, Bruce can’t help his disproportionate relief at not being truly alone to pick up Gotham’s smoldering pieces.

 

Even though he could have died, was targeted like so many of Bruce’s close ones, there is something about Jim Gordon that has always put Bruce at ease. He refuses to be other people’s responsibility. No matter how Bruce tries, Jim will not let him carry the weight of his life.

 

Jim who was there at the start, who is here at the end. Jim who is consistent, unwavering. Predictable in his manner and his action like a steady guiding light. Bruce trusts Jim to do exactly as he says, that Jim wants Bruce safe and sane, wants Bruce’s help in protecting Gotham.

 

Gordon is no fool. Aware of Jeremiah’s fixation and the danger Bruce is in now that the city is cut off, Jim finally lets Bruce in on his investigations. He figures it’s safer if he’s informed so Bruce is granted a temporary position as a kind of investigative consultant for the remaining skeleton crew of the GCPD. Jim checks in periodically, and makes a point to share any relevant tactical information. 

 

Bruce’s new routine consists of nightly patrols, debriefs at the precinct and finally, a dawning return to his empty cavernous home that still houses a pool of Selina’s dried blood on the carpet of the study. 

 

He knows that it's not healthy to leave it, but Bruce can't bring himself to get rid of the blood. Cleaning up the evidence of his failure won’t help Selina heal, and Bruce is of the personal opinion that he deserves any and all distress the sight causes him.

 

Such fixations and self-imposed punishments do nothing to stop Bruce’s subconscious from needling at him with horribly tangible imagery.

 

With dreams. 

 

It is the fear, Bruce thinks. The unaddressed fear almost six years deep, working on his brain and pulling from it all the perfectly preserved snapshots in his mind's eye. It's no wonder Bruce turned to alcohol, relied on poison to degrade his brain cells, to try and disintegrate the red of blood and indigo bruise, the chorded ripple of white scars, the orange of fire and hair.

 

Even if he wanted to lose himself now, the alcoholic benders that dulled Bruce’s senses are effectively over. In this new no man’s land of a city, he can’t afford to have his faculties impaired. 

 

Substance free and completely alone, Bruce has a rude awakening that he is very far from okay. That maybe he isn’t ready to take responsibility for an entire crumbling city. But he made that bed, and now he lies in it. No matter that he remains afraid, that he is effectively just a teenager shouldering a man’s burden. Hah, Selina was right about his ego, and taking too much. Funny that clarity always comes only once he’s taken things too far. 

 

So here he is, waking nights and sleeping days, playing both hunter and hunted. 

 

Here he is, feeling the residual echo of every traumatic event in his short life. Unable to banish anything from his mind. Not the sight of his mother and father limp on their backs like gutted fish, or the texture of Jerome's barely attached face moving beneath Bruce's closed fist. Not the soft give of Ra’s Al Ghul's guts twice over as Bruce killed, and killed him again. Alfred's split mouth and bloodied laughing teeth as the fear gas induced vision tried to slit Bruce a red line of smile, or Selina shot through and falling. Falling, falling. 

 

Certainly not the image of Jeremiah dragging a cloth down his face, showing Bruce what pale deadly creature incubated beneath. Not the rigor mortis body under Bruce’s panicking palms as he heaved himself away and then clawed frantically up the earthen walls of Jerome’s grave. All the while certain, so certain that a clammy hand would soon be at his neck, fingers in his eyes, pulling him down, buzzing with flies in the teeth, rough laughing voice telling him to  _ stay _ .

 

Of course his brain rearranges it vividly and liberally. Of course he dreams in twin shades of Valeska.

  
  


\---

 

Sunday 10 am

 

Bruce sits with Jerome in a circus ring of trampled straw and animal scent. Jerome holds his wrist tightly in a hot circlet of fingers and Bruce does not try to get away. It feels familiar, something in the back of his mind tells him that if he struggles the people he loves will die for it. Always his face is caked with white greasepaint, always his mouth caressed of copper blood. It pulls and flakes and cracks in the creases of Bruce’s lips. Always his wrist is punctured with the pressure of a staple gun discharging its contents. It seems as though Bruce can never perceive the world beyond Jerome’s suppurated smile and when he turns to escape the vision, it is as though a mirror is held to his eyes where he only sees the older boy's face ad infinitum. 

 

There are bodies on the outskirts of the ring too, mountains of them, piled up like so much garbage. Jerome claps him on the shoulder and brings him in close. The point where their bodies touch burns like a fever. He jeers at the slack faces, describing their post mortem expressions, laughing breathy and loud in Bruce’s ear. Bruce is ultimately glad that he can't seem to see them clearly past the funhouse haze of Jerome’s scarred reflection.

 

Often in these dreams Bruce hears a voice layered in between the eerie music of the calliope. It speaks out loud from overhead, and the words could only be born of Jerome’s fantasies. Honey, beetles, blood. There is a kind of reverence thick behind the killing and rending of Bruce’s body described by these words. Something reaching, covetous, something more than killing desire. So much so that he wakes with a garbled cry and his hands held out as if to ward off a possessive ghost.

 

His dreams of Jeremiah in comparison are gentle, thus they are sharper and ever more painful.

 

Tuesday 11:16 am

 

They sit across from one another in what Bruce recognizes as an arboretum. It is not a location that Bruce knows and he isn’t sure this is even Gotham. Light diffuses in hazy halos around the diverse foliage of trees and low-lying shrubs, soft and utterly foreign to the setting that Bruce associates with Jeremiah. He who is all hard angles, technology, rough concrete, darkness and secure bunkers. The man looks as he ever does, cosmetically changed by the insanity gas. His lips smattered with blood pigment, his eyes vermillion pale. 

 

“Hello Bruce, it's good to see you,”

 

A calm voice, a warm voice. Speaking as if things were like before, when they worked side by side on the generators, and Bruce was not yet disabused of the notion of trust. 

 

Bruce stiffens and leans back ever so slightly in the iron wrought chair. His reaction to dreaming up Jeremiah is both worse and better than Jerome. Better because there is no immediate threat of violence, no bodies, exploding heads, gouting knife wounds or bludgeoned skulls. Worse because Jeremiah exacts harm in a quieter way. He cuts to the heart of things and keenly seeks to strip Bruce of every supporthold he might use to stabilize himself. It's like a quiet freefall with Bruce never knowing where or when the final impact will hit, only that it will be deadly.

 

They bathe in the ozone and earth smell of plants for several quiet moments. Jeremiah looks at Bruce calmly, while Bruce searches the edges of himself for a hint at which path lies towards sanity. It is strangely warm though Bruce can see the gloom of Fall outside the arboretum glass. He is overhot and weighted down. His chest feels compressed and he clutches at it vaguely, deciding whether to speak or to try and wake up. Bruce licks his lips and his eyes flick across the table, Jeremiah is still watching him quietly.

 

“This is a dream,” Bruce states unnecessarily. It is more for his benefit than anything, a reminder of the unreality of the situation.

 

Jeremiah inclines his head and Bruce can feel the fear induced adrenaline inside of himself rise to a crescendo at the small movement. Sweat beads on his brow and Bruce  _ hates _ his physical responses to stress. Easy telltales that both Jerome and Jeremiah picked up on, things that increase Bruce's uncomfortable awareness of the difference in their age and experience. Under the fear there is anger, hatred, a broiling desire to lash out. Bruce has a sudden vision of himself squeezing Jeremiah’s throat in one hand and punching him with the other, over and over again, until this pale evil face slips off and he is once more the friend that Bruce so desperately wanted for him to be.

 

“Be easy Bruce, you're safe here,” Jeremiah smiles at him as if he can see the internal panic, and shifts forward towards Bruce. Just a little too fast, a little too eager.

 

Alarm blooms in his blood, hate and hot fear at that small encroaching movement. The presumptuous offer of comfort does not make him feel safe.

 

As if Bruce will ever feel safe with Jeremiah ever again.

 

Bruce flattens himself against the chair and decides that No, he does not want to prolong the dream after all. He closes his eyes tightly and uses what he remembers from his imprisonment with the Shaman of the Court of Owls to control his mind, to will his brain to realize that it is sleeping, and pull him from this scene back into the afternoon sunlight of his bedroom where it is safe.

 

Across the table, Jeremiah makes a clicking noise with his tongue and it reeks of disappointment. Bruce digs his nails into his palms, into the burn scar that has never stopped being tender and tightly stretched over the meat of his hand.  _ Wake up, wake up, wake up. _

 

“Not ready I see. That’s all right. It’s been an emotional couple of days,”

 

He hears Jeremiah rise and then the clicking of his steadily retreating footsteps. When Bruce opens his eyes he is surprised to find himself staring at the ceiling of his bedroom. The time reads 1:17pm.

 

Bruce pushes aside the covers and steps out onto the balcony. He lets the sun play off his face and stares at the tall hedges that interrupt the vast grounds. They remind him of the arboretum, but the shade of green is natural and Bruce is too grateful that nothing matches Jeremiah’s eyes. Bruce’s hair is matted with sweat and his knees feel weak with a strong urge to curl up on the floor. Instead he suits up and heads to the GCPD to confer with Gordon. Afterwards he burns away the afternoon chasing leads that culminate in nothing but busted knuckles and dead ends. Sleep is an unattractive prospect so Bruce keeps going, past nightfall, past sunrise, into nightfall again.

 

Thursday 7:20 am

 

The next time he tries to rest, running upwards of 42 hours without sleep, Bruce dreams of Jerome. Though he tries the same technique, he can not force himself to wake. Even as Jerome shows him in dedicated detail all of his sketches relating to Bruce, even when he peels back a section of his face and has Bruce feel the bare and ropey texture of muscle beneath.

 

“You’ve got this too, under there,” Jerome’s gravely voice croons, and Bruce wonders how it is that he can put a mad grin to sound. His hand shoots out lightning fast, but he touches Bruce’s cheek feather soft. “We’re all made of the same stuff on the inside,” He strokes a burning line down Bruce's face, then his nails find a fissure along Bruce’s jaw, like the edge of a tape roll, and he begins to pull a corner of Bruce’s skin back. 

 

There is no pain, only a dull tugging and the excruciating knowledge of what is happening, all that it implies. There is no waking, only enduring.

 

The bright morning hurts him. Gagging, and scrabbling at the side of his face to make sure it is still intact, Bruce barely makes it to the bathroom in time to retch. The clock reads 9:38am.

 

The lack of sleep start to take its toll. His reflexes suffer, as does his cognition. Bruce makes very little progress over the next roughly 21 hours before stumbling in battered and aching, and unwillingly passing out in the study’s leather armchair. 

 

Friday 6:00 am

 

Jeremiah is back. Bruce is relieved enough to see him instead of Jerome that it must betray his face, because the man wastes no time applying pressure to a bruise.

 

“I told you Bruce, you're safe here,”

 

Oh he is tired. How Bruce wants a lie to believe in. 

 

He stands, clutching at his chest, something that seems to be a reflexive gesture in these dreams of Jeremiah. Crumpling the soft fabric of his sweater between the sweaty pads of his fingers because there is a weight and a pain there that makes breathing difficult. Bruce leans across the table and grips blindly at a red gloved hand without breaking eye contact. He holds it tightly and it feels so real, down to the stretch of the leather. He stalls on the emotion rising in his throat and doesn’t make a sound so much as he expels a shaky exhale.

 

The thought comes to him, simple and easy. If this is a dream then Bruce could seek comfort. Relief from his constantly strung nerves. The paranoia induced insomnia, the burning city, the blood and the death that seek to imprint themselves on his life. If this is a dream Bruce can put Gotham on hold, regain a lost friend, just for a couple hours in the fleeting safety of sleep.

 

But this is Jeremiah, even in fantasy Bruce ought to know better than to trust him. Bruce's dreams turn sour often enough that he can't ever truly relax. Bruce says as much. Jeremiah’s lips quirk.

 

“This is your dream, here at least I’m as you wish me to be,”

 

Bruce’s throat clicks as he swallows. Anger flickers like an uncertain candlelight.

 

“Liar. Why would my mind conjure you up looking like this?”

 

“Because you want to know the truth of me. It calms you that I have no mask left to hide behind,”

 

He screws shut his eyes and clenches his teeth. He should not indulge in fantasies of trust. The Jeremiah he used to know is gone, if he was ever there from the start. 

 

Jeremiah in the waking world is the orchestrator of Bruce’s greatest anxiety. He wears the face of Jerome but does not smile the same, so serious compared to his brother, so focused and meticulous. He used to be something else to Bruce, and the fact of losing so trusted a person has put a crack in Bruce’s sanity, just like everyone always wanted. 

 

In the real world he can not let that show, can not allow it to change him. Here in a dream Bruce is more than tempted to be weak the way he must never allow awake. 

 

“Tell me Bruce what is it you want?”

 

Oh he’s tired.

 

“You can tell me,”

 

Bruce wavers.

 

He wants his parents back, Alfred home, Selina healed. Himself whole, less angry less afraid, less vitalized by the urge to curl his fingers into a fist and strike. Gotham safe, somewhere-someone safe for Bruce to talk with, a person who understands. Right now and most of all Bruce wants Jeremiah back to the way he was before.

 

Not to be alone. God he doesn’t want to be alone.

 

“A friend,” he says it and tastes defeat. 

 

Jeremiah looks at him and smiles warmly. It transforms his face. Bruce is suddenly so overwhelmed by the fact that this dream does not hurt, does not show him the ways in which someone wants to dissect him, peel him open and degrade him with a serrated knife piercing laugh, or the punch of staples, that the air is snatched from his lungs. 

 

“I can be that for you Bruce, easily,”

 

When Jeremiah rises and Bruce is caught in a solid broad shouldered hug he can’t quite help but to give in momentarily, to begin to curl towards it and press his face into the plaid overcoat.

Then he strikes out, slamming his fist into the surprisingly solid form. His anger flickers and roars to life and at the core of it a desperate sadness bellows. Because they could have had this! They could have had all of this in the real! He screams incoherencies into the fabric. Jeremiah does not falter against the onslaught of blows.

 

“Easy Bruce, it’s all right. There was nothing you could do,”

 

It hurts to hear and it heralds the fear, that such a transformation could be put down to fate, could happen to anyone, to Bruce.

 

“Why didn’t you fight it! You were a good person! You were everything Gotham needed!” His voice is high, cracking the way it hasn’t since puberty.

 

“I am everything  _ you _ need Bruce. In the end there was nothing to fight,”

 

Bruce shakes his head fervently. “You changed. I trusted you and you changed! You hurt Alfred, you tried to kill Gordon you-” his voice drops to a whisper, a low pained moan, the strength seems to go out of him, “Selina, she's never going to walk again,”

 

Jeremiah makes a neutral humming sound that reverberates through Bruce and a red hand rises up Bruce’s back to rest against his nape, fingertips sink into dark brown hair to the first knuckle. Bruce’s eyelids flutter. It makes Bruce want to curl in again, go boneless, just give in to the heavy consuming sadness, maybe he can find sanity in the pit of it.

 

“I'm not that person. Your brain is making me up because you need my help, you need to process what’s happened,” 

 

Well if that isn’t the most sane and reasonable thing Bruce has heard come out of Jeremiah’s mouth for weeks.

 

Bruce remembers himself and tries to come back under control. This is by far the most vividly he has ever dreamed. He can smell and touch, feel texture and temperature, his reflexes are almost perfect save a clinging grogginess like that of moving through molasses.

 

“I...”

 

“Yes Bruce, go on,”

 

He wets his lips, unsure, he doesn't trust this at all and yet he can't seem to help himself. He still wants to confide in Jeremiah.

 

“I can’t sleep, and I can’t find you. Where are you hiding, tell me that and you’ll help,”

 

Bruce feels Jeremiah shake his head, his hand strokes through his hair. The action makes Bruce feel younger than he is, cared for, safe. He is far from young, having assumed responsibility for the entirety of Gotham, and in truth Bruce no longer recognizes what it means to be safe. That concept seems to have died many times over since the night his parents did. 

 

“I can’t tell you what you don’t already know. I’m a figment of your psyche,”

 

“Then what good are you,”

 

“I can offer a place to voice your fears,”

 

“So you can turn them on me, do you think I’m stupid,”

 

“Not stupid Bruce, hurting,” 

 

“Oh who’s fault is that then,” It comes out bitter.

 

“I’m sorry Bruce,”

 

“You’re not sorry, you’re just saying what I want to hear,”

 

“Yes, I am,”

 

“Stupid psyche,” Bruce hisses. What the hell good is his dream version if it winds up being so true to the original Jeremiah. 

 

“I really would have liked more time together, you know. But ah, circumstances did not allow,” Jeremiah pulls back slightly and indicates his pale complexion.

 

“It’s a little late for regrets,”

 

“Oh I don't regret anything Bruce,”

 

Bruce laughs humorlessly at that, his entire body feels dragged down, the edges of himself like blood exiting a wound in a gravity assisted slide, slicking skin, soaking into carpet and clothing alike.

 

“Nothing,”

 

The rush of Jeremiah’s warm breath in his ear seems too real. Bruce shivers, then wakes up.

 

\---

 

Saturday 8:15 am

 

Gotham in the day feels dead. A fake city, made believable only by the abandoned remnants of Gothamites’ possessions left to rest where they fell in the aftermath of the evacuation. 

 

It might as well be paper and fallible with how easily Jeremiah choked the lives from it in a single afternoon. 

 

Bruce considers his place in the city. Born and raised to practically inherit it, so much of Gotham is marked by the Waynes, and so much of that mark is a sordid stain upon concepts like goodness and sanity. 

 

Is that what Jeremiah wants? His perceived gift to Bruce, a clean slate? Thinking about it makes Bruce’s head hurt, no matter what he does he can’t reconcile Jeremiah’s point of view. A slate cleaned with blood is stained from the start, and anything built on bloody ground will rise bloody too.

 

He visits the pigeons. They make him think of Selina and that hurts, so Bruce stays for quite some time. He wonders if she will ever forgive his decision to leave when she asked him to stay by her side. He listens to the gentle coos and the rustling of the pigeon’s feathers as they adjust their roost. There is simplicity and innocence in their existence. Bruce feels old and worn and very far from pure but he takes solace in their company anyways.

 

“What am I doing here?” He asks them. 

 

One speckled brown and white bird half opens her eyes. She is fat and crowded in by shades of grey, blue, white. She is sleepily unconcerned with Bruce’s plight. The city is a chaotic machine of moving villainy but does she let it ruffle her feathers? No, she is above that, and Bruce finds that he loves her for it.

 

He steps up to the ledge of the building and looks out. The city is real enough, Bruce decides. Still just a city, and he simply a part of that beating infrastructure. There are still living hearts here, so Gotham endures.

 

Bruce is meant to protect those lives. That’s why he’s here, that’s why he’ll always be here.

 

\---

 

Sunday 6:49 am

 

For the fifth time in a row Bruce dreams of the arboretum and of Jeremiah. The colors are more vibrant, and there is the sound of running water, the chitter of birds and insects to accompany the smell of tree blooms and green grass. The spot is different, instead of the circular enclosure, table and pond, Bruce is faced with high green hedges extending across the horizon. 

 

It is the entrance to a maze, Bruce feels the certainty of it in his bones and is hardly startled when he senses Jeremiah moving behind him. He strides past Bruce, barely grazing his shoulder and comes to rest in the alcove beneath the towering arch. He extends a hand.

 

“I can show you the way through,”

 

“What is this?” Bruce asks, approaching. He feels light on his feet, weightless. Contrary to all rationality, he feels much less threatened by Jeremiah in this dream, instead he is again relieved there is no Jerome. He’ll take small victories where he can.

 

“Take my hand Bruce, or you might get lost,”

 

Bruce looks down, Jeremiah has divested himself of his red gloves, pale nearly iridescent skin shimmers in the unnatural green light. The sunlight plays through the leaves, dancing across prominent veins and long elegant fingers with deep set nail beds. 

 

Again Bruce asks, “What is this, what does it mean?” Bruce has a renewed kind of intrigue for these dreams, they seem to be leading him, they seem to have a narrative. It takes too much effort to fight to wake up, and Bruce is exhausted, maybe he should stop struggling against what his mind is trying to show him.

 

Jeremiah smiles at him, it is serene and Bruce can see the person he used to be through the soft lines of the expression. It might just be that Bruce badly wants the old Jeremiah to be there, so much that he’s cast aside the initial fear. He doesn’t know anymore. He doesn’t know if he has the energy to care. He feels so, floaty and vague.

 

“It’s just your mind processing, a way to understand,”

 

“Did you design this one?” Bruce asks.

 

“Take my hand and find out,”

 

When Bruce allows Jeremiah to take his hand and lace their fingers together the feeling of weightlessness increases as his whole consciousness becomes grounded and focused on the point of contact between them. It is the only thing that feels tangible, like solid matter against matter as opposed to the web of dreamed reality.

 

“Oh Bruce,” Jeremiah sighs. 

 

They enter the maze.  

 

It is beautiful, Bruce can feel himself wanting to relax entirely and give himself over to the green. Another part of him finds it funny, erring on the side of hysterical. Holding hands with Jeremiah and strolling in a garden after what has happened in the waking world is too surreal. 

 

They slide through the narrow verdant corridors slowly at first, then faster, little by little, just subtly enough for it to be too late once Bruce notices the acceleration. Until suddenly they are hurtling along at an altogether horrifying pace. Their toes barely skim the grass, and sunlight flashes in and out among the gaps of the canopy like a badly made charioscope.

 

They round corners and hurtle down infinite stretches of hedge. Left, left, right, straight on for what feels both eternal and instantaneous. Left, right, right again. Bruce badly wants it to stop but he fears letting go of Jeremiah’s hand in case he truly does get lost, in case he is set adrift, sliding at a careening pace along the maze path with no hope for an exit. Bruce holds tighter. The speed immediately increases, the force exacted upon his body as they hurtle through the maze hurts now, it feels nigh unbearable. Bruce thinks again of letting go but at this point he's not sure that he physically can. 

 

He tries to speak but the breath rushes from his open mouth, snatched by their terrible velocity. Green, green, such a frantic moving patchwork of green. In it Jeremiah white and pale, the only clear thing not rushing and roaring. Bruce lunges up and throws his free arm around him, finally managing to shout past the scream of wind in his ears.

 

“This doesn't help me understand anything! Jeremiah! Stop!”

 

The cessation of movement is instantaneous.

 

They are still entangled, Bruce gripping at Jeremiah's hand with too much force, nails carving crescents into paper white skin. The other arm hooked around his shoulder, clutching him tight, unwilling to loosen his grip in case they begin moving again. 

 

Bruce breathes harshly, his adrenaline and heart wildly out of control. Jeremiah does not hold Bruce to him, he simply lets him cling. The walls of the maze become a cityscape of clean and elegant beauty. There is no one else, just perfect pure Gotham, Bruce and Jeremiah together in the center of a newly built world.

 

A world with only a dual heartbeat. 

 

“You do understand. I know you’ve understood me since the moment we met,”

 

Bruce shudders. He shakes his head, still he does not let go. 

 

“You saw me like no one ever has,”

 

Bruce does not want to let go. Despite everything, he wants to prolong the illusion that Jeremiah could be whole and sane and safe again. 

 

“You may no longer like what you see, but in time I feel it won’t hurt so much,”

 

Therein lies the problem, because a part of Bruce does, ever will. A part of Bruce can not erase what Jeremiah means to him.

 

“When you reveal your true self I'll be there and I won't shy away, I know you Bruce.  _ I know you _ ,”

 

Bruce closes his eyes and wishes to be back with the birds on the roof, to find again that innocent animal peace and listen mindlessly to feathers ruffle. To believe with confidence in his reason for giving his whole being over in protection of a city like Gotham.

 

He releases Jeremiah’s hand.

 

Bruce wakes. His fingers feel numb and his heart hurts.

 

\---

 

Bruce decides that the GCPD is a different kind of birds nest to the pigeon roost. A hollowed out bramble after all the blue jays have taken to the skies. 

 

The building still holds evidence of Jerome’s mark in the toothy clown grins spray painted up and down the walls, but the destruction and refuse dragged in from riotous days prior has been somewhat set in order by the handful of officers who stayed behind. Bruce remembers that Lucius has set up a base of operations in the forensics lab, and makes a mental note to visit.  

 

He steps up to the second floor and looks through the double doors to find Jim Gordon sleeping, face pressed into a sprawl of documents that span the commissioners desk, wearing the same clothes from two nights ago. 

 

Bruce watches him in his respite and thinks again how lost he would be if Jim had been like any other cop in Gotham, if he hadn’t taken that single moment five years ago to genuinely comfort Bruce, set him on the path of conquering his fear. He realizes now that along with Alfred, Jim Gordon is as close to a father figure as Bruce will ever have again.

 

He taps on the glass door and turns away to give the detective time to collect himself.

 

Boxes of case files, criminal dossiers, Jeremiah’s blueprints, maze scraps and notes lifted from his bunker litter the two empty balcony desks like haphazard offerings at a shrine. Bruce thumbs through a pile, absently tracing a path through a swirling maze.  

 

He hears the door, senses Gordon approaching and turns his face slightly in acknowledgment, still somewhat unable to tear his eyes away from the blueprints.

 

“Morning Bruce,”

 

“Good morning Detective, any news?”

 

“Not much since you last checked in, Harvey’s out on patrol tracking Bridget’s recent string of arsons. We’ll know more once he comes back,”

 

Bruce hums in acknowledgment, he’s distracted trying to solve the maze. There are so many portions that double back and at least a dozen runarounds, Bruce is starting to think it’s a trick design, one with no solution.

 

“Everything all right?”

 

Bruce’s finger runs into a dead end on the map and he stops. Jim has his full attention again, but Bruce’s fingertips don’t leave the blue ink.

 

“Fine, why?”

 

“...you look like shit, honestly,”

 

Bruce laughs, he knows that the circles under his eyes betray him.

 

“Switching time zones is harder than I thought,”

 

Gordon only raises an eyebrow.

 

“I’ve become nocturnal. Like a rat, or a bat. Used to be diurnal,” 

 

This time Jim squints at him with confusion plain on his face and Bruce supposes his sleep deprived babble and badly attempted humor are lost on the detective. What the hell, Bruce could try being honest with someone for once.

 

“I've been dreaming,”

 

Instead of continuing, Bruce rocks his index against the paper and is satisfied when a line of blue ink transfers to the pad of his finger.

 

“Oh yeah?” Jim prompts him.

 

“Yes...Of Jeremiah. I've been dreaming of Jeremiah, and of...,” 

 

Bruce trails off, suddenly not sure he can talk about the dreams if Jim decides to ask. Not sure he is willing to divulge the violent shape and nature of Jerome’s dreams, or the strange and disturbing comfort he is beginning to draw from Jeremiah’s.

 

“Ah,”

 

Bruce is witness to that thoughtful patriarchal stoicism he so strives to emulate but can never seem to grasp. 

 

Again he is reminded of his age, how everyone says he is too young. Bruce knows he can be overly emotional and that it distracts him from the big picture. That he is driven by his heart, his heart which beats too loudly, too wildly with blood. His feelings that lately rise like tides pulled in the waxing and waning of twin moons. A dark and a pale side, one scarred and one smooth. 

 

There, markedly. His thoughts are drifting again, amazing what sleep deprivation can do to the brain.

 

It takes Bruce a minute to realize that Detective Gordon is staring at him, he must find something of consequence because his expression furrows in worry. Bruce feels embarrassment war with the childish desire to be looked after, even now when Jim can not afford to babysit anyone.  

 

“These dreams keeping you up then are they?”

 

Bruce shrugs noncommittally. 

 

“Right,” Gordon says dryly. “I might have something for you,” 

 

Jim motions for Bruce to follow and they descend the stairs, past the block of cells and through the hallway that leads to the interrogation room. They go further, into the locker room where Bruce observes the one dingy sink and mirror that mark the entrance to the showers.

 

Jim fiddles the combination of his locker and when the door swings open, Bruce catches sight of a twice torn and retapped picture of Dr. Lee Thompkins. Jim leans his shoulder against the inner door and the portrait disappears. Bruce feels a flash of heated shame at his incredible selfishness. He stayed behind to help Gotham, yet here he is distracting Gotham’s best hope with his personal problems.

 

Jim retrieves a small plastic baggie with a couple of peach colored caplets in the bottom. He shakes the thing and frowns.

 

“Shit, I thought I had more. With everything going on I never got around to refilling the prescription,”

 

“What are they?” Bruce asks, a little wary of taking pills. Thanks to Tommy he knows what uppers can do, and even if they tend to keep you awake, Bruce does not like himself on uppers. He’s done with that part of his life.

 

Jim must catch the meaning in his tone because he twitches a shallow smile and says “Don’t worry, just a sleep aid Lucius got me. I have my share of bad dreams. I take one of these, and manage black oblivion every time. Entirely dreamless,”

 

He holds the baggie out to Bruce.

 

“It’s not much but it will give you a couple days rest, get you looking human again,”

 

Bruce reaches for it, then stops up short. Detective Gordon has bags under his eyes too.

 

“But what about you, they’re yours if you need them I-” The shame of his selfish imposition catches up to Bruce. His dreams haven't even been all that bad lately, no Jerome. Just odd encounters with Jeremiah. Talking. Quite tame.

 

Jim places his other hand firmly on Bruce’s shoulder.

 

“Lucius can forage up a refill, so take it,” It is the look Jim gives him, part stern, part compassion, all parental but nowhere near patronizing that gives Bruce the strongest urge to dive in for a hug. It would feel so safe, so good, but Bruce holds back and it hurts in a forlorn kind of way.

 

Something has changed in the span of time between twelve and seventeen, and again many times over since the city became an island. There’s an embarrassment to showing affection that makes Bruce feel ashamed of the urge to seek comfort. 

 

He’s no child, he’s a man now by any standard that counts. He wants Jim Gordon to respect him as an equal, so he should put an end to childish desire sooner rather than later.

 

He accepts the pills with a sincere thank you instead. Then they talk logistics, and tactics. Gordon is intent on having a few words with Penguin and Barbara Kean, he mentions something about calling in a special task force to help the GCPD and he asks if Bruce will scout the docks to see how well guarded they are against new arrivals.

 

The pills are an uncertain weight in his pocket all morning and afternoon. Does Bruce dare try them? He hasn't decided yet.

 

Back at the Manor, Bruce settles up against the headboard of his bed. The comforter is strewn with papers, police files, Bruce's own research. It is clear that in the week since the bridges went down, all the players in Gotham are amassing forces and carving out turf. 

 

It’s still early, time for organizing followers, resources, and laying future plans, which is why it makes sense that no one has made any huge moves. Still, the fact that Bruce has yet to catch a single sighting of Jeremiah is unsettling.

 

Except for when Bruce closes his eyes of course.

 

He takes the baggie out of the pocket of his discarded jacket and looks at the contents. He wishes he'd been more insistent on getting the over the counter name from Gordon so he could look up potential side effects.

 

Bruce pulls up a quick search on his tablet ‘peach colored sleep pills’ but the perfunctory results are so varied that he gives up. He's too tired to sift through hundreds of pages and weed the false matches from the true.

 

What to do, does he chance it? Take one and hope it works? Trust in Jim Gordon?

 

Bruce has taken pills from Tommy and others without knowing the effect before, the results were...less than ideal. Bruce grimaces and feels the hot shame of his past actions.

 

He replaces the plastic baggie in his pocket and turns on his side to focus on his tablet, he needs to do more research. A little voice in his head urges him to just call Detective Gordon and ask him. It's the most straightforward way. It’s the most logical thing to do. It also reeks of paranoia and mistrust, Bruce doesn't want Jim to think he’s ungrateful or that he suspects Gordon would intend to cause Bruce harm.

 

He's still worrying on this when his eyes droop, his head lolls, and Bruce falls asleep.

 

\---

 

Sunday, 3am:

 

In this dream, Jeremiah will not shut up.

 

Bruce sits in the warmth of the arboretum, uncomfortably stuffy, and quickly becoming irritated. He can feel himself wanting to come around. Because it would be easier, because fighting against the tide of madness and violence in Gotham incrementally, person by person, really does seem like an unending exhausting march towards death. Because Jeremiah talks so convincingly, so calmly and rationally. 

 

So relentlessly.

 

Hasn't Bruce observed the renewed growth that comes after a forest fire? Or the frenzied stimulus of bees swarming around a queen after their hive has been ravaged, how quickly the insects find order and harmony in the construction of a new home?

 

Hasn't Bruce destroyed things he's built before. Things like Leggo towns and towers that he felt he could do over better, how the second or sometimes third draft is the one that takes. 

 

“Please, Jeremiah stop talking,”

 

“Oh that's rude, Bruce,” but his voice is good tempered and Bruce can her the little smile in it without even having to look.

 

“I'm tired. I just want quiet for a minute. Can't we sit in silence as friends?”

 

“We are friends Bruce, that’s why I’m trying to explain to you-”

 

The cycle starts up again. Fountains of words in Jeremiah’s calm precise tone. Twice more Bruce asks this dreamed up, strangely docile version of his former friend to sit with him in silence, and twice he is rebuffed. Jeremiah is helping Bruce, he is merely explaining the fact that-

 

When a part of the body becomes infected or diseased, the foul part is removed. With cancer, the organ or the whole person is irradiated to cleanse the body of sickness. To tackle an infestation of vermin, you don’t go after the roaches one at a time, you destroy the entire colony at once. To cleanse a city, you raise it and rebuild.

 

His even, sonorous voice, the hot pressure that always encases Bruce’s chest in these dreams, the fact that this dynamic feels so like when Jeremiah was explaining the finer points of the generators blueprint designs. The dips and valleys of his voice, the excited lit that works its way into Bruce's ear, that tugs at him, hoping to incite a matching passion. 

 

It starts to make too much sense. It starts to feel inevitable, like there is no getting around it, only allowing it to envelop him the way it feels like Jeremiah’s unending string of words are wrapping around his head, buzzing in his ears, filling Bruce’s mind and making thinking of rebuttals harder and harder.

 

He leans forward in the chair and rubs his eyes exhaustedly, his jaw aches and Bruce realizes he’s been clenching it for some time, that he hasn’t said a word against Jeremiah’s manifesto in what feels like hours.

 

It makes sense, in theory. It all makes so much sense. In Theory. And yet, and yet there is something. Something wro-

 

The hand on his face startles Bruce.

 

“Why such a serious expression?”

 

Jeremiah tilts his chin up, his fingers are splayed long down Bruce’s neck and faintly Bruce wonders where his acute fear has gone. It takes time to organize his thoughts and even longer to form them into words. 

 

“I don’t want to,”

 

His pulse point beats irregular against Jeremiah’s fingertips.

 

“Don’t want to what, Bruce?”

 

He feels a formless vague distress as the words and concepts he is struggling to articulate dissipate before they reach his mouth. 

 

“I don’t  _ want _ to,” In his heart Bruce feels like he might cry out, in reality the words sound petulant, as if whatever resistance, whatever rebuttal to Jeremiah’s infallibly logical argument Bruce is trying to put forward is in reality foolish and unimportant.

 

“But you  _ do _ want to, Bruce, and you will. It’s our destiny,”

 

“no,” it is quiet and small. Bruce doesn’t know the reason behind the word, but he keeps making the shape soundlessly with his mouth.

 

_ no, no, _

 

He wakes up. When he thinks of Jeremiah, the fear and the hatred are watery vague things floating just out of reach. The notion of laying waste to Gotham, of building a newer, purer city on the blood-wiped slate of the old, now makes a sickening amount of sense.

 

And this, the idea that Bruce could feel so differently from one dream to the next, that in a dream he’d be so weak for the longing of friendship that Bruce would start to agree with Jeremiah’s worldview- 

 

It tips the scales and Bruce decides to take the pills, regardless of the consequences.  

 

\---

 

They work perfectly. Bruce passes out near 11am and wakes at 9:20pm after an entirely dreamless ten hours, feeling rejuvenated in a way he hasn’t for weeks. Excitement and relief war for the biggest place in his heart. Then, realization and disappointment at the reality of his limited supply.

 

Only two left. He’ll have to make them last. Afterwards it’s back to dealing with the weird dreams until Lucius can get Detective Gordon more.

 

The dreams bother him, of course they do. They portend some horrible ultimate change of heart. They would sway him to Jeremiah’s side. And yet, Jerome hasn’t made an appearance in days. Bruce finds he isn’t possessed of a  _ terrible _ urgency to end them completely. 

 

It’s twisted, certainly, but a part of Bruce enjoys the moments he has with the Jeremiah of his dreams. These fake conversations, these fictional moments. Sometimes they are distressing, yes, but Bruce can convince himself he knows it’s not real, that it’s a figment of his imagination. Jeremiah is too soft, more palatable, less frightening.

 

The crushing guilt of still wanting to reason with him when Bruce can never forget what he did to Selina, well, it’s less painful and confusing when it’s dreamed up and fake. To end the dreams for good would be to let go of his friend, and come to terms with the fact that Jeremiah is entirely beyond saving. 

 

Bruce doesn’t know if he’s ready to let go. So he clings indecisively like a teenager unable to move on.

 

For two days Bruce makes great headway, he hears whispers of a woman with platinum blonde hair and pale skin just like Jeremiah, moving in the shadows of Gotham. The ace of spades shows up, pinned to the lapels of an errant Cult of Jerome follower and Bruce pockets it after making sure he tells all. The follower doesn’t know much, he says the card just showed up one day with instructions from “J” to wear it in plain sight.

 

Bruce concentrates his efforts on locating more cards. He finds two other aces, the diamond and the spade. One entirely by chance during a patrol of the factory district, caught in gutter runoff, lucky not to have been swept into the maw of the sewer. The third Bruce obtains same as the first and the Cultist who sports it is even less coherent or helpful than his companion. Bruce is starting to think tracking Jerome’s old followers is a useless endeavor, that someone has been distributing cards to clueless fanboys and girls as a distraction tactic. 

 

Demoralized, and running out of steam, the last straw comes when Bruce runs out of peach pills. 

 

Bruce fights, but eventually succumbs to sleep. The dreams come back with force.

 

\---

 

Tonight it seems he dreams in consequences.

 

An inescapable glass maze, a forest of hands reaching to hold him and to cut him in equal measure. 

 

Each hand is a long pale thing stretching from ribbons of wrist and arm. Double-jointed, many-elbowed appendages protruding from a formless darkness above, below and all around him. Each set of pale fingers wields a sliver of mirror glass that Bruce recognizes from that night at the carnival not so very long ago.

 

Hands hold him aloft and open, his arms and legs extended. Bruce has never felt so bare and vulnerable. This time the blades do dip into his flesh. His stomach, his thighs, up at the juncture between arm and torso right where the resistance is softest. Bruce is a mute pin cushion of scarlet perforation. Then, the long pale fingers on the hands follow the trajectory in the absence of the blades and slide slowly, almost gently into the unoccupied wounds.

 

Bruce twists in the grip like a torn animal, and finally screams. 

 

It is a real scream, one that tears his throat, hurts and wakes him up. He can still feel the fingers sink into the wounded flesh, his heart beats around the punctures and the intrusions. He clutches at his side, his thighs, curls up tightly, rocking to banish the feeling, trying to pinch together skin that is unmarred but that feels ever breached. He feels his gorge rise and Bruche retches, the image, the sensation is almost enough to drive him mad. 

 

All that just from a dream.

 

It is the worst yet, so sudden and violent compared to the relative peace of the recent others. An unforgettable dream, and the pain stays with him far into the waking hours of the rest of the day. Bruce does not visit the GCPD or go on patrol that night because in his mind, the pale hands that push into him are stuck on skin crawling continuous replay. Every sensation triggers in Bruce an agonizing hypersensitivity, like his nerves have been peeled out of the casing of his skin and exposed to raw biting sunlight. It has him clutching at phantom wounds like he might close them if he clawed hard enough.

 

_ Get out, get out. Get out of me! _

 

He sits in the perfect dark of the cave with his back to the wall and his father’s computer monitors a shield against intruders, shuddering, body curled tight, holding his head in his hands, resisting sleep like his sanity depends on it.

 

Because it almost certainly does.

 

\---

 

The GCPD that Bruce finds after the loop of his nightmare has faded enough for him to function is cold and stark grey, a monochromatic kingdom. Paint seeps downwards in muddled waves of ugly pale color from where Jerome’s graffiti has been sloppily pressure washed from the gothic arches and pillars. Bruce finds it hard to look at. He wishes Jerome’s spattered mad grin would come back. That at least held an odd sense of logic. Bruce understands Jerome’s ideology, as violent as it is, as strongly as Bruce opposes it. He can at least acknowledge in some base part of himself that everyone has darkness. Everyone possesses the capacity to maim, break, kill. It’s the choosing not to that sets apart the good from the evil, that and circumstance. 

 

Bad days, as Jerome said.

 

Jeremiah is bad everything. He is, in a word, insidious, and complicates Bruce the way Jerome never did.

 

Jeremiah says otherwise but it is rapidly becoming clear to Bruce that he doesn't want to reveal Bruce's inner darkness, because Bruce already knows what's inside of him and he can control it...he wants to engineer and insert a darkness of his own making so that Bruce becomes exactly what Jeremiah desires him to be. There is no choice, no frivolity. Only frenzy, obsession, and a breaking down of Bruce's mind until he cannot resist.

 

Jim is talking intently to detective Bullock and Lucius just outside the doors to the forensics area. Bruce catches Jim’s eye and makes a bee line for the commissioner's office. He hears Harvey grunt some kind of affronted complaint and knows that Lucius’ intelligent gaze is tracking him. Once inside Bruce shuts the door and begins a restless pacing. Jim joins him shortly. 

 

“Bruce, what’s going on? You didn't check in yesterday, did something happen?”

 

Bruce continues to pace, one hand clapped over his mouth so he doesn’t blurt out the first of many panicky strings of words his mind is urging him to dump, one held tight over his abdomen where he can almost still feel the-

 

_ There had been bruises. _ Marks on his body that by no accounts should have been there. No knife wounds, nothing like that, but blotches of dark purple skin in the exact spot, the exact-

 

He shudders, a wave of nausea overtakes him and he nearly trips over his own unsteady feet. He catches himself on the desk and sits down clumsily on the edge. He finds Jim’s eyes wide with alarm, hand half outstretched to steady Bruce. His expression tells Bruce he must look haggard. Brutal honesty then, no other excuse will be bought or believed.

 

How then to explain that nightmares come alive. He can't, instead Bruce is blunt.

 

“I need more pills,” 

 

Jim looks slightly taken aback, as if it's not what he expected Bruce to say at all.

 

“Bruce what-”

 

“Please. I tried to space them, but I ran out. I have to keep the dreams away,”

 

Gordon looks uncomfortable, he glances away, eyebrows furrowed. Finally he looks back, and Bruce’s stomach drops in anticipation of his next words.

 

“There are no more,”

 

Bruce's entire body seems to slow, a little betrayal seeps in around the edges. But Jim had said-

 

“You said Lucius could find more,”

 

“We haven’t had time to look,”

 

“You said…” Bruce mumbles it and stares at a point a little to Gordon’s left, processing.

 

“We're stretched thin, fires are cropping up in city blocks all around Bridgit’s territory. I couldn't spare anyone until we had that under control,”

 

Bruce passes a hand over his face and then presses down over his eyes,  _ hard. _ He feels queasy, greasy and hollowed out, it’s been almost fifty two hours. His eyes feel bleary and hot, itchy. He blinks rapidly, then presses his hand down again  _ harder _ , to disperse any tell-tale moisture.

 

“I don’t think I can stay awake much longer,” 

 

Silence prevails.

 

Bruce looks up, bleary eyed. The light hurts. Gordon is staring at him as if he’s really seeing him for the first time, his mouth is slightly agape.

 

“How many days?”

 

Bruce shrugs, Gordon seems to take a moment to count the days since giving Bruce the pills. Bruce cuts him off before he can jump to conclusions.

 

“I didn’t take them the first night, and then I spaced them out,”

 

The admission doesn't seem to assuage Gordon in the least. His eyes flick around as if searching for some answer, searching for Alfred. When no relief squad comes he runs a hand through his hair and looks at Bruce again.

 

“What...what kind of dreams are you having?” His voice is thick with apprehension. He sounds as if he’d rather not know.

 

Bruce intercepts the reluctance and brings it home deep within his own chest to settle beside other ugly and rampant emotions like shame and humiliation, like Fear. He realizes that it is best he doesn’t say anything about the specific nature of his dreams, not if he wants to keep Detective Gordon’s respect. 

 

“Never mind,”

 

Jim steps forward, “If I’d have know they were that bad I'd have prioritized-” Bruce retreats tighter into himself. He doesn’t want pity, pity stings. 

 

“I said, never mind,” his tone is clipped. Emotionless. Bruce feels anything but.

 

This was a mistake, trying to rely on other people. Weakness is a wound just begging to be pressed into. 

 

“Tell me what to look for, the brand name or the generic label. I can find them on my own. I apologize. You aren't Alfred, I can't expect you to drop everything just because I’m having a little sleep trouble,”

 

“A little-” Jim sputters. He goes flushed at the temples, like his blood pressure has just risen. “Bruce, sleep deprivation to this degree can seriously mess with your head,”

 

“I assure you I'm perfectly fine, just tell me what to look for,”

 

Jim looks at him and there is something strangely wounded in the expression, something that feels to Bruce like hurt, but his voice is sympathetic nonetheless. 

 

“Pharmacies were some of the first places that got raided when the evacuation order was issued, and afterwards the first places that most of the dealers hit. I really don’t think you’ll have much luck,” 

 

Bruce tries not to react, he wills his body still and his heartbeat calm. Only it doesn’t work, only his heart feels like it’s jumping sickeningly outside his ribcage and he knows he’s visibly shaking.

 

Gordon can see it too, his posture takes on a nonthreatening quality of calming, something taught at the academy for diffusing a fight or flight perp.

 

“Bruce, talk to me. Let me help. We’ll figure out what's going on and when Lucius gets back to Gotham in a few days-” 

 

“Lucius left? But he was just here, I saw him!” Bruce balks.

 

Gordon approaches him with his hands upraised, like Bruce is some skittish animal.

 

“Yes, just now. When you saw us we were discussing some final mission details. At this point I can’t call him back, it's a delicate operation, not something that can wait or be interrupted. But Bruce, he’s due back in two days so-”

 

Bruce can’t take it. He’s wound too tight and can’t stand the way Detective Gordon is advancing towards him, cautious step by cautious step, like Bruce is at risk. He does not want the comforting touch he’s sure Gordon will try to give him. He needs space, he needs time alone to think and figure this out. Bruce kicks himself for showing so much vulnerability.

 

He bolts, dodging under Gordon’s outstretched arm and sprinting from the precinct before Harvy can even realize what’s going on or rise from his desk to intervene.

 

_ “Bruce!” _

 

Bruce ignores Gordon’s shouts for him to come back. He drives erratically, and runs several red lights smashing at the tech-loaded dash of the mustang, declining repeated calls from Jim because the ringer sets his frazzled nerves on edge even more than they already are. In retrospect Bruce is lucky, driving like this would have probably killed him if there was any traffic left on the road to contend with.

 

At the Manor, Bruce sets about brewing the most concentrated cup of caffeine he can possibly manage. His hands shake badly as he grinds the beans. He has to stay awake, he has to.

 

He's also gotta calm down. It's fine, he doesn't need Lucius or Gordon, or anyone else’s help. Bruce can figure this out in his own. All he needs is coffee to get his head working straight again.

 

After the espresso Bruce feels no less tired, the idea of collapsing on the sofa is no less attractive and it scares him. He realizes he’s been awake too long already and that the clock is simply counting down to the moment where his body shuts off.

 

There is a moment where Bruce seriously considers fishing out the gram of coke he stashed away and never got around to disposing of, but he rapidly trashes the idea. He won’t fall back down that particular rabbit hole, no matter how desperately he wants to avoid sleep. It’s time to do some reconnaissance, find out where to get the pills, or a reasonable substitute. Then things can go back to whatever serves for normal in this Hell of a no man’s land. Bruce just has to make it till morning, make it till sunrise, and the renewed sunlight will give him the boost he needs to keep going. Humans are diurnal after all.

 

Bruce takes a freezing shower to keep from getting too comfortable, and suits up in his full combat gear before setting up in the bedside armchair. He serves himself another shot of espresso, balances his tablet in his lap and starts working. It’s slow progress because Bruce literally has nothing to go on besides the color of the pills and the fact that they’re a sedative of sorts, but he’s determined nonetheless and scrolls the evening away into late midnight hours.

 

It's around five in the morning, just before dawn, and Bruce has managed a short list of a few hopefuls. The nearing sunrise makes Bruce's exhausted heart feel lighter than it’s been in days and he leans his head back against the plush armchair to savor his victory. Just a second of rest, not sleep of course, just resting his sore neck and prickling eyes. Then he’ll hop to it, drive to town and start the groundwork portion of this quest.

Reality is not so forgiving. Bruce can’t fight sleep forever, and even with two espresso and a cold shower, he has barely shut his eyelids a moment before his body’s needs override his conscious mind and he blacks out from exhaustion.

 

\---

 

“I’m curious,”

 

Bruce whips his head up, he is in the arboretum again, fragrant trees encircle the small sitting area. Jeremiah stands at the outskirts and Bruce notes that the circular shape of this enclosure quite nearly mimics the circumference of the carnival ring.

 

Bruce’s stomach does a repulsive flip, as if it has been gripped and twisted upside down, he’s broken out into a sweat just by looking at Jeremiah’s pale skin, pale hands. Bruce focuses on the ground and finds he can breathe a little easier, his guts aren’t trying to jump ship from the rest of his body.

 

“Why tell Jim about your dreams Bruce?”

 

The question throws him. Much more than that, it is the tone that prickles unpleasantly. Jeremiah sounds reproachful, and Bruce feels like he’s done something he shouldn’t have. Cautiously he answers. He doesn’t like the way Jeremiah is looking at him, an exacting kind of stare, a calculated green.

 

“Gordon asked, seems I look tired these days,”

 

“Yes your exhaustion does show, poor Bruce,” the words are sharpened with a slight edge and Bruce tenses at the scent of hostility.

 

Jeremiah strides towards the table with purpose. No, with anger. There is anger in the lines of his walk. Bruce knew it. Knew that the pleasant illusion wouldn’t last long before this dreamed up Jeremiah turned on him just like the real one. If this dream is going to sour like all the others, Bruce won’t give it up without a mental fight. 

 

He can’t let the knife wielding hands return. 

 

Bruce stands swiftly and in a single fluid motion, positions himself so that the chair and table are between them. He grips the back of the wrought iron chair, testing its weight, determining its usefulness as a projectile, or bludgeoning tool. It’s his mind after all, Bruce will do his best to direct the dream.

 

Jeremiah stops before he reaches the table, he eyes Bruce’s defensive posture and his hands on the iron chair. He raises his own in a placating gesture.

 

“Sit with me and let's talk again, let's just be friends enjoying company, the way you want it,” 

 

“I prefer to stand, thanks,”

 

“Suit yourself,” Jeremiah eyes Bruce like a viper might a wounded mongoose. Then after a pregnant pause, “What  _ is  _ Jim Gordon to you?”

 

Bruce narrows his eyes. Now that doesn’t add up. “I thought you already knew everything I know,”

 

When Jeremiah doesn’t answer, Bruce’s feeling of unease thickens. He looks up and around the arboretum.

 

“I want to wake up now,” he calls out loud.

 

He’s always been able to wake from his dreams of Jeremiah at a whim. It’s the violent ones of Jerome he has trouble with. Bruce hopes the dream isn’t outside the scope of his influence yet.

 

“Oh come. Talk to me, you know it helps,”

 

The resistance is another alarm bell going off. Bruce feels hot, feels the chirruping cricket legs of anxiety rub together in his hindbrain.

 

“I'm not so sure that it does. Last time you didn’t leave me much room to say anything. It was pretty annoying actually. I swear I had a word-cocktail hangover. So yeah, I’d rather talk to Alfred, or Detective Gordon-”

 

“Jim is no friend of yours! Don't delude yourself Bruce, it's a tired look,”

 

Bruce blinks at the venom in Jeremiah’s tone. Jeremiah keeps going,

 

“ _ I’m _ your friend Bruce, your  _ best _ friend. You can talk to me,”

 

“ _ Selina _ was my friend. Gordon and Alfred too, real world you tried to take every single one of them away from me. So forgive me if I don’t want to talk anymore, I want to wake up,”

 

Jeremiah’s mouth twists into an ugly sneer at the mention of Selina.

 

“Don’t tell such transparent lies. You could never talk to her, talk to any of them in any significant way. The way you talk to  _ me _ . The way you shared your true deepest feelings with  _ me _ ,”

 

Bruce bristles because he's been caught out, and the worst thing is his feelings have not settled at all. If only he could extinguish them, instead they writhe and fester in a confusion of rot and hurt inside his ribcage. Jeremiah had been safe in more ways than one.

 

“It’s only natural that you would want- _ need _ to confide in someone who is like you,”

 

“Gordon can hear me out just fine, it’s the twenty first century. People don’t care about that stuff anymore,”

 

“Maybe so. You  _ can _ talk to him but you don’t. Why is that Bruce, why so much shame and confusion when it comes to our dear Detective. Daddy issues? Worried the strong father figure in your life will reject you, or maybe...take advantage?” 

 

Bruce makes an involuntary sound of disgust. Jeremiah’s lips quirk up in a nasty smile.

 

“Don’t. Don’t be  _ vile _ , you know that’s not what I meant-” He starts thunderously.

 

“Oh calm down, it’s a common pathology. I never met my father you know, at least not that I was aware of at the time,”

 

Bruce is off balance, this conversation is quickly steering into frankly bizarre territory.

 

“That was one of the things that set Jerome and I apart at an early age. He wanted to know all about our dear old seafaring dad, while I was perfectly content with mother. Well…not perfectly content, but I at least had the sense to keep my matricidal urges quiet. God he was such a moron,”

 

Wait. That absolutely does not line up. Bruce doesn’t know any details regarding Jerome or Jeremiah’ childhood beyond them being orphans.

 

“You can’t be telling me this, you-that’s to say  _ I _ don’t know these things about Jerome or Jeremiah, you said you can’t tell what I don’t already know,”

 

Jeremiah's eyes flick off to the distance.

 

“Everything is Jim Gordon’s fault to start with. If he hadn’t been nosing around the circus that night, Jerome would have probably gotten away with cutting up the bitch. The circus would have moved on, and he never would have come looking for me,”

 

Stop, Bruce thinks. Stop stop stop saying things I couldn't possibly know. That means-

 

“He lead them to my house too in the end…”

 

He refocuses on Bruce, sharp and vibrant and oh too uncannily present.

 

“You shouldn’t trust Gordon, I wouldn’t. He’s the reason Jerome got to paint me white, Jim is,”

 

Jeremiah runs a finger across bleached skin, ignoring the way Bruce is backing away. The movement is unconscious on Jeremiah’s part, a tick, a tell that his new aesthetic condition is a sore spot.

 

“Bruce really, if Jim could be trusted would he ever let you within ten miles of my brother?”

 

_ Of me? _ Is the unspoken sentiment that hangs in the silence between them.

 

Across the intricately welded iron table Jeremiah’s expression is casually unperturbed but Bruce can feel the acidity of his tone like bile rising at the back of his throat. There is genuine hurt there and it has vitrified to rage.

 

His pale eyes follow Bruce as he takes another backwards pace away from the table. Bruce will turn and run, he’ll reach the edge of the dream and then he’ll wake up. He’ll wake up alone in his sun dappled room, upset, confused as all hell, but ultimately whole  _ because this is still just a dream! _

 

And yet, Bruce can’t resist putting in a final stubborn word.

 

“Jim has always protected me,”

 

“He uses you to suit his needs and leaves a trail of death in his wake,”

 

“So do you,”

 

“Ah, well, my outcome is meant for your benefit. It has a noble purpose,”

 

“I won’t change, no matter what you do to Gotham,”

 

Jeremiah smiles again, and it is nasty, sharp, frightening.

 

“What about what I do to you? Everyone has a breaking point,”

 

Bruce knows it’s true, knows what it’s like to be forcibly pushed across a line you tell yourself you will never breach. He’s got blood on his hands, the blood of an immortal inhuman god, but blood nonetheless. Killing Ra’s almost broke him and Jeremiah knows it.

 

Bruce shakes his head defiantly.

 

“I won’t become like you,”

 

“I think we’re pretty similar already. As for Gordon, he has always delivered you into my hands when asked. I suppose he does have your best interest at heart since with me is where you belong,”

 

Bruce shake his head and to his dismay, staggers as an all too physical, tangible, dizziness washes over him. He takes a breath, deep and rattling. Jeremiah's dream is crumbling. It reeks of the stress of Jerome’s smile without the expression. His lips twitch like two carmine cuts across his white face. The air, quiet and full of tension. Bruce digs a hand into his shirt and claws at his chest.

 

The tension feels like the words in Jerome’s journal. All sweet syrup and congealed blood, intention made sickly, sticky and stuck all over Bruce's face, mouth, neck, body. Hands with long fingers laced in dark curls and then digging deeper, piercing Bruce's temples and the bone of his skull, wriggling into the soft tissue of his brain. Penetrating his psyche, twisting him, changing him irreversibly into something he does not recognize. Something with death on its breath that creeps in maze-made streets of rubble and pairs well with vermillion, and arterial red.

 

Bruce opens his mouth only to make a sound more like a retching sob than anything close to words. His heart is burning painfully. It feels coated in molasses, dripping like hot bubbling sugar over a candied apple. 

 

His head and his face broil with a coagulated fog and disorientation that Bruce can not shake. Wake up, wake up. He must wake up. He has to stop the dream from turning sour.

 

“Even now he’s given you up with little fuss, those pills were so half-hearted. No follow through, no real effort to keep you safe. Jim gave you three, and forgot about you. It’s why I can’t respect him,”

 

Bruce makes a click in his throat as he swallows another retch.

 

“Isn’t that right?”

 

Jeremiah is close, the arboretum is gone, he is in in his bedroom. Bruce stumbles, cold hardwood squeaks beneath his combat boots. His mouth is utterly dry, his skin feels like crinkled paper, his lips when he licks them hold an acrid smokey taste. The realization burns just as bitterly.

 

“E-every time? Watching me sleep, making me dream? You-how?”

 

“Crane is an invaluable associate, I might keep him around,”

 

Bruce brings his hands up in a warding off gesture. His primary emotion isn’t surprise, he’s long resigned himself to this kind of intrusion. God, it does make sense now. Everything makes sense now. 

 

Jesus he’s so tired, he’s so, so very tired of being unsafe in his own home.

 

“Please stop, just stop all this,” it comes out hoarse, weak and pathetic as Bruce feels inside. He’s not sure he can keep going, not alone. Though he knows it’s a futile hope, he only wants to be wrong, to wake up from this too. For  _ everything _ that has happened with Jeremiah since they met to have been just one long and badly drawn out nightmare. 

 

Because the alternative is exactly that, one long drawn out nightmare. If this is to be Bruce’s reality, if this is what lies between the two of them forever, what waits for him the rest of his life, Bruce might choose to falter into that final and eternally dreamless sleep.

 

Jeremiah’s expression is fond, indulgent, hungry, excited, a manic minutiae of muscles twitching his features. It makes Bruce ill. It looks the way it did when he lined up the gun to Selina’s stomach without sparing her a glance and instead ate up Bruce with his eyes as he pulled the trigger into her guts.

 

“It's all for you,” 

 

Of course it is. God, Bruce is tired. Tired and sad.

 

Jeremiah steps up and pushes at Bruce just over the heart with a splay of his fingers, toppling him with an easy flourish. Falling backwards feels like falling from several stories, backwards into black with Jeremiah only a grinning pinprick above him.

 

\---

 

The palm shaped weight upon Bruce’s chest can only be human. He knows what to expect before he opens his eyes and the sting of hurt is already building behind his wet lashes.

 

He jerks away, of course he does. This isn’t a dream and there is no comfort to be taken from the person above him. There is a disastrous choire of shrieking dissonance in his heart. A disgust and fear, a loathing hand in hand with heavy sadness and regret that make Bruce queasy as he fully wakes. 

 

Jeremiah leans over Bruce in his bed, in which he has sat with hand over Bruce’s heart for so many days, weaving wakeless dreams and nightmares for Bruce to fall into, traps to ensnare him and sway him over to Jeremiah’s way of thinking. It’s all thanks to a very special, subtle toxin prepared by Scarecrow. One that kept Bruce in a semi-conscious stasis, perfectly susceptible to suggestions of visual stimuli, sensations of pain, and capable of holding conversation. 

 

Jeremiah is as he ever was. Pale skin, blood lips and washed out vermillion eyes that crinkle fondly (fixedly) even now that the illusion has been shattered and the playing must come to an end.

 

Bruce can't take it. It's been building for so damn long, he’s been functioning past the breaking point for so many lonely weeks now that it is no longer possible to contain himself.

 

The howl is coming, rising, wriggling up his throat carrying with it so much of his pain and anger, his betrayal and fear. Before he can release it, let loose, expel some final fraction of the negative force that corrodes his body and stress-tense muscles, Jeremiah's gloved hand is tight across Bruce’s face. The real touch and their acute proximity does the equivalent to a system reboot and Bruce freezes.

 

“Don't scream Bruce, what's a little dreaming between friends?”

 

A little dream. Sure. It is only one more little notch to be whittled away from Bruce’s sanity. One more push among an infinity of little pushes past the threshold of what Bruce was ever constructed to take, and Jeremiah as always, sees nothing wrong with it. Sees it as a gift, a favor between friends.

 

“You've been searching for me every night, telling all the poor cockroaches to let me know you’re looking. Have you given thought to what to do with me now that I'm found?”

 

“I'll stop you,” it sounds paper thin and vague even to Bruce's ears.

 

“I won't stop Bruce, you’ve made good strides to choose me over that little cat, but now you’re clearly at a plateau. I had hoped to jog you out of it with our therapy sessions but-”

 

“A plateau?  _ A plateau!”  _ Bruce shrieks, he can’t hold it in.

 

What more could there be, what else can Bruce endure.

 

Bruce shoves, surges up violently, then kicks out and manages to dislodge Jeremiah from his position over him. Bruce leaps from the bed and to his feet so as not to be on his back again. He’s gasping and trembling so hard it feels like he might vibrate outside of himself. Bruce doesn’t even know how to place the emotions he feels, volatile as they are, he only knows he must push back, he must make Jeremiah see the wrong in all of this or he will fold and crumble.

 

“ _ Do you even understand what you’ve done?”  _ He screams.

 

“I’m only helping you, Bruce,”

 

“You’ve been  _ torturing me! _ You’ve been messing with my dreams, my head! You’re sick! You’re-”

 

“Helping you understand,”

 

Bruce makes a feral noise of frustration and rage at the impassive tone. He wants to rip Jeremiah to pieces.

 

_ “I’m never going to understand! Realize that now Jeremiah!  _ Can’t you see how irreversibly you’ve changed things? You’ve made it all rotten! I hate you! I wish I'd never met you! I wish instead that Jerome had liv-”

 

Jeremiah strikes him,  _ hard. _ Less of a slap and more of a brutal palm strike. Copper blooms inside Bruce’s mouth from where his cheek is impaled on his canine. He sees Jeremiah glance where it tries to surge hot and red out of the corner of Bruce’s mouth. Jeremiah's tone chills Bruce. He speaks in a low deadpan voice, bloated with cold subdued rage.

 

“You're ungrateful as always Bruce.  _ Hate _ is a strong word. Is that really any way to speak to your  _ best friend? _ Especially when I tried to give you the version of me that you so crave,”

 

Bruce’s mouth fills with a slow trickle of blood, he tongues at the puncture on the inside of his mouth and the sting of pain focuses his rage. Calmer now after the violence, less disoriented, less desperately hurt. Bruce narrows his eyes and tries for a psychological return volley.

 

“What version of you did you serve Jerome? Don't think I've forgotten all the things he said to you, about you. You used him to get out didn’t you? Like you used me to get your bombs. I bet he doted on you, thought you two would be in it together against the world, but you stepped on him to get out of the hole that was your life,”

 

Jeremiah shrugs dismissively.

 

“He really did hold a cake knife to my throat Bruce, of the two I am the sane one,”

 

“You keep insisting on your sanity. There is nothing sane about trespassing into someone’s mind and manipulating their dreams for your amusement,”

 

“Not my amusement Bruce, your benefit,”

 

“Reading me Jerome’s journal, weaving into my head all of the things he wanted to do to me, that was a boon to me then was it? That’s what’s going to make me this ‘Dark Knight’ you and Ra’s won’t shut the hell up about?” Bruce spits, voice rising with barely repressed hysteria.

 

“No. It was to show you I’m not without compassion. To show what you were spared from when he died. What I spared you from,  _ continue _ to spare you from. I know, I read the whole journal Bruce,”

 

Jeremiah seems unaffected, and it is his words that put Bruce on the back foot instead. Like a little spark lighting the wick to ignite all of Bruce's base fears. 

 

He can feel a crawling kind of panic, a frenzied hive on the verge of swarming, beneath his skin. The images of those dreams, the marked undertone of desire woven into every violent drawing of viscera or jagged scribbled description of loving torture, he does not know how he will ever get them out of his head. But that is a problem for another day.

 

Instead of recoiling Bruce leans into the horror and retorts with venom.

 

“Of course. You  _ would _ make my dreams of Jerome unbearable and dreams of yourself gentle, palatable in comparison. Trying to make me believe that taking your side would result in any kind of peace or benevolence,”

He breathes hard, feeling the momentum of his words propel him through his other murky emotions. Bruce wants to hurt Jeremiah as much as possible, he tries to use Jerome as a knife blade.

 

“You’re just a false martyr, playing victim to your brother, when in reality you’re the more deranged, obsessive one, the one with an inferiority complex the size of Gotham, the one who couldn’t manage to change me. The one who failed.”

 

It is a dangerous thing to say to Jeremiah, vindictive as he is, but at this point Bruce is willing to risk much if it means unhinging his enemy. To his dismay Jeremiah does not rise to the bait. It leaves Bruce with a sinking feeling. The swarm of insects under his skin go quiet and dead-still like they’ve been drowned. 

 

“I only said I didn’t want to kill you, Bruce. You’re the one who hopes for gentleness. I’ve since left my mark in  _ deeper _ ways than my brother ever could,”

 

With a cold dread Bruce realises that the dream of pale fingers plunged into his wounds,  _ that _ was a fantasy of solely Jeremiah’s making. One that is all too realistically executed.

 

Jeremiah looks at Bruce knowingly, a little smirk playing up on the corner of his mouth.

 

“I'd say you find me more than palatable, your heart is so close to the surface that I could reach  _ in _ and touch it,” Jeremiah raises a hand as if he means to act out the words.

 

Bruce flinches harder than he means to, he’s sweating and sickly feeling under his clothing, but quickly shores up the rage to cover it, and lashes back.

 

“So touch it, see if it makes a difference now. So what I cared for you! So what I wanted a good thing for myself! I was stupid, naive! I was just happy to have someone remotely my own age who seemed uncomplicated for once! Honest and kind and genuinely interested in helping Gotham!”

 

Bruce is shouting now, the urge to strike out is unbearable. He wants to kill Jeremiah. It would feel so good, it would save countless lives and make Gotham safer in an instant. Bruce also knows it would entirely and irreversibly unmake him in the process.

 

Jeremiah rolls his eyes and huffs out an exasperated breath of air.

 

“Cared for, meant something to. You talk in past tense but we both know those feelings haven't gone anywhere. If anything they've ripened. I don't think you would stop me if I were to act on mine,”

 

Jeremiah steps forward and Bruce's adrenaline spikes again. He stands his ground even as Jeremiah’s eyes flick once more the the bloodied corner of this lip.

 

“I'll stop you,” Bruce grinds out between bared teeth.

 

“You will almost certainly have to kill me,” Jeremiah’s eyes sparkle.

 

“I won't kill,”

 

“Then I'll always come back to you, which shows me that a part of you already understands the connection between us. To think I called you ungrateful, I apologize,”

 

Jeremiah steps up to him, a hair's breadth away. So close Bruce can smell him. Ozone, like the arboretum in the dreams, metallic like blood, and chemical.

 

His red lips are thinned out in the beginnings of a smile, his chin jutting in that prideful severe way. His face still holds a hint of who he used to be, the softness of a person Bruce cared for so much, but a hint and an echo is all that remains. His eyes, always, always now, are pale, manic, and hungry, seeming to suck the color from his skin and all his surroundings. He speaks softly, breath warm where it hits Bruce’s mouth in their proximity.

 

“Eventually I win,”

 

_ Bruce hates him, he hates him, he- _

 

“Even now after everything you continue to resist your true character. You won’t take that final step. You still cling to Jim Gordon like a child grasping at his father’s coattails. You still won’t be self reliant, you abdicate your throne and refuse to admit what we could be together. What we had was real, Bruce, and we could have so much more,” 

 

_ He loves him- _

 

“But I  _ will _ tear you down to build you up if that’s what it takes. I am patient, I know what you want. You’ve proven it to me every time you let me close, even though you hate me, you want me too. You want someone to rely on so badly you let  _ me _ in, Bruce,”

 

_ Bruce Fears him. _

 

Jeremiah pauses. “Not that I resent the sentiment, I do want you to let me in,” he says softly and looks at Bruce's mouth for the third time. “What happens once can happen again after all,”

 

Stop it, Bruce thinks. Don't.

 

“But. Not until you and Gotham are complete,”

 

Bruce has something to say to that at least. 

 

“I will never be who you want me to be, we fell out of synch the moment you let the old Jeremiah die. The Jeremiah who struggled against his darkness for fifteen years, and stepped beside me into the light to face Jerome,”

 

At this Jeremiah finally frowns, seems to falter, but only for a moment. His eyes turn up and he smiles dazzlingly, almost imploringly at Bruce. It twists at something deep and pure and childlike that remains in his heart because Jeremiah’s smile belies a naivete only the truly insane possess. For the hundredth time, Bruce mourns the mind and soul Jerome pushed to ruin, and all that Bruce lost in the act of that one final deathrattle of a joke.

 

“You’re right, of course, but it doesn’t matter,” Jeremiah says.

 

“You will change too, you  _ will _ see things my way sooner or later, and we won’t have to dance this tiring little number. We can be like before Bruce, build something great for Gotham side by side. There will be no secrets between us, no lies, not even the ones we tell ourselves in dreams,”

 

The viper in him returns and Jeremiah strikes out. He closes the distance between them then with a surprising speed and force that makes Bruce reel back and give ground. Fingers, red-gloved fingers, find the back of Bruce’s head once more and grip his hair tight at the place his neck meets skull. 

 

Unyieldingly, so different from the comfort offered in earlier dreams, in earlier times. Jeremiah brings the corner of his lips to the bloodstained crease of Bruce’s own. It could almost be a chaste thing if the act wasn’t so bloated with force and violence. Bruce is reeling, absurdly he thinks of his mother reading him Peter Pan, and the secret kiss Miss Darling, then Wendy kept at the corner of her mouth. Smiling and full of grace, his mother had kissed his father goodnight just like it to show Bruce the way. 

 

In an instant the image is tainted, forever linked in association with Jeremiah. Ozone, blood, the crisp smell of tweed and italian leather, the texture of afternoon stubble against his face. Dark green hair, the chemical scent of pale skin that Bruce wildly imagines is seeping into his own pores. Boundaries crossed again, trust taken and broken again. Force exacted upon his person by someone who was meant to be safe, who turned out anything but, again and again. 

 

His mind jackknifes in an attempt at escape the emotional pain but begins to rapidly show him everything in Jerome’s notebook.  _ Knife, snake, mother, Miah, bruise, burn, bind, cut, smile, cats, guts, heart, sex, lions, fire, straight razor, honey, beetles, Bruce disemboweled, Bruce dancing, Bruce twisted, Bruce laughing, splitting the seams of his sad pierrot face. _

 

Then Bruce sees a vision of himself wearing red gloves, gossamer thin like painted blood fabric upon his palms. He is encased in a prism prison of mirrors, tearing off Jerome’s face to find Jeremiah inside of him, hatching from the husk of the body. Another rending peel of mask skin, to find Bruce inside of that. The Bruce beneath him grins wide with manic blue eyes and extends his fingers into the soft concave of Bruce’s abdomen, piercing the skin and slipping to settle deep, deep inside of his guts.

 

“It’s true I can never go back,”

 

Jerome draws away, Bruce’s blood imprinted against his carmine lips, almost blending into the discolored skin. A part of Bruce, a secret neverland kiss plucked and forever belonging to him now. He runs a gloved hand across Bruce’s stomach as he retreats.

 

“But you Bruce, can move forward to meet me,” 

 

\---

 

Bruce jolts upright and nearly breaks his forehead open against the underside of Jim Gordon’s chin.

 

Beads of sweat roll down his brow into his eyes. He heaves in gulps of air, fear and anger. His hands tremble so badly that Bruce has to lock his arms up into his armpits to stop the movement.

 

He can still feel Jeremiah’s cheek pressed to his own, taking without permission, pervading a precious rare memory of his parents. It makes Bruce livid, he digs his nails into the soft skin hard enough to bruise through his clothes. Badly he wishes he could be ripping into Jeremiah's smug and lofty smile. That Bruce could tear his face to ribbons until he had scars to rival Jerome’s.

 

“Hey, hey, hey! Woah easy!”

 

Jim Grabs at Bruce in an attempt to stop his catscratch quest to mar the flesh of his underarms. Bruce violently fights the grip on his shoulders, he really can't handle being restrained right now, of anyone having hold over his body or mind, of anyone touching him, even benignly.

 

“Bruce, it was just a dream! I’ve got you. You're here with me,”

 

Just a dream, ha! Lies, all lies steeped in ozone and betrayal. This is probably a fucking dream, with another horrible nightmare just around the corner.

 

“BRUCE!”

 

Jim’s deep voice finally registers, and his smell like that of a father cuts through the frenzy of Jeremiah’s chemical ozone. Bruce stops fighting and goes still. His mind races, searching for some flaw in the design, some tell-tale clue to either verify or reject the reality of his waking. 

 

Is this real? Can Bruce trust this to be real and not another layered dream?

 

Jim tucks a palm against Bruce’s neck and moves his face up so that they make eye contact. His hands are rough, calloused, dry the way a man who doesn’t fuss about appearances’ would be. Not at all the pale smooth hands of Bruce’s vivid nightmare.  

 

“Listen to me Bruce, you’re awake,” Gordon punctuates the statement with a firm little shake.

 

He still doesn’t reach out. Bruce does not think his mind would survive it if Jim turned sour the way everything else has. Jeremiah asked what Jim is to him, well, a great deal. Bruce’s light in the dark. An ultimate waypoint tying Bruce to the ideal that all which seems irrevocably bad can still become good again, light prevailing once more where darkness makes a home. 

 

“You promise?” Bruce hates how small his voice sounds.

 

“I promise,” It's the tone. Familiar and irreplicable, something Jeremiah has surely never heard uttered by the mouth of Jim Gordon, so he could never copy it, that finally convinces Bruce.

 

Bruce grabs at Jim and pulls, not caring about being weak anymore, only needing very much the reassurance of someone who won’t hurt him, someone real, someone safe. He holds fast and leans towards the warm humanity. Jim clutches him tightly, his suit rumpled and plied just the way it ought to be, his face always clean shaven and carrying the tell tale smell of the cheap brand of aftershave they stock at the GCPD. 

 

Thank God for Jim Gordon. 

 

“He was here  _ again _ , in my house-my room. Those dreams weren’t dreams, he made me see. Showed me because he thought he could force me to understand,”

 

Jim’s arms tighten around Bruce to the point that it’s hard to breathe but he welcomes the reminder that this is reality. He wishes he could word his explanation better, Bruce knows he’s not making proper sense. 

 

“Are you hurt?”

 

Bruce barks out a wet, manic laugh before he can reign himself in and he feels Jim flinch. Worry and anxiety are obvious in his body language and the way his hands hover lightly over Bruce’s sides, as if checking. It’s something Alfred does often. Bruce thinks fleetingly that maybe men never outgrow their weakness, that true men let their vulnerability be their strength and it was foolish for him to try to hide it at all. 

 

“Not physically, he didn’t do anything to me,”

 

Except take something innocent and mark it with poisonous green. _ (shut up) _ Except prove that Jeremiah can get to Bruce no matter where he hides. Even in sleep.  _ (it’s not important now) _

 

Bruce doesn’t mention any of that. Instead he cuts to the heart of the matter, the heart of what he’s learned thanks to these dreams. 

 

“Does Gotham have some kind of unofficial Botanical Gardens? Something small, something private that most wouldn't know about?”

 

Jim retreats from Bruce, one hand still a firm grounding point on his shoulder.

 

“There's the old aviary that was converted after an earthquake in the 1920’s. The city took ownership but never made steps to open it for public use. We can be there in twenty minutes,”

 

Bruce is already swinging his legs over the edge of the armchair, entirely dressed, he only needs to tie his boots.

 

“Bruce, wait. You can’t go, what if he’s waiting for you?”

 

“That’s the point Detective, all this was for me.”

 

It’s always for Bruce.

 

“I won’t let you put yourself in his line of fire,”

 

“We both know that’s not true,”

 

Jim blinks, a little stunned, a little hurt. Bruce finds that he really doesn’t mind Gordon’s propensity for putting him in harm’s way. It is more of an indication of Jim’s trust in Bruce than it is disregard for his safety. Jim has proven that he can follow through, despite what Jeremiah said, Jim was here when it counted. He's here now, when it matters.

 

“We should at least wait for backup,”

 

“Call them on our way, Jeremiah will have gone. He's playing, I'm just a rat in his maze,” 

 

“Bruce, you aren’t making any sense,” Jim tries cautiously, wary of setting him off again so soon after the last blow up. Bruce is in his own head too deep to care about being handled delicately. He paces the room, muttering.

 

“To make me the same. To leave a mark on my life... He’s not like Jerome, he won’t kill me but he’ll do anything short of it. That's why all the games, the torture, the maze, the dead ends. This is never going to be over, is it?”

 

Jim stops him short, not much taller than Bruce now but certainly more solid. He could prevent Bruce from leaving if he really had a mind to. Bruce hates the thought, though he knows Gordon won't now. He hates being closer to a teenager in body still, hates his vulnerability compared to Jeremiah, to everyone left in Gotham. He really is just like a little rat, a clean clinical lab rat running the infinite corners of a path that has up till now, been charted for him by others. Punctured and prodded and shut off from the way out.

 

“Why play into his game when you know he's leading you to dead end after dead end?”

 

He levels Jim with a stare into which he channels all of the things he can never bring voice to, not fully, and says the only thing he finds fitting and truthful.

 

“Because rats learn, and even rats escape,”

 

Bruce will break the pattern. He’ll make his own path.

 

Jim concedes to Bruce easily enough after that. He still calls Bullock for backup and informs the scattered squad of their destination, in case it's a trap.

 

The gardens are unsurprisingly empty, Jeremiah has already departed the scene. He has left little of his effects or hints of future machinations behind besides a sprinkle of orange peels. Bruce clenches his fists and wonders if this is yet another taunt or simply an unhappy coincidence.

 

A little further in, down a smooth granite path that leads to an enclosure of elms, maples, and one juvenile willow tree bordering a quietly lapping pond, the two of them find the table. The same table from Bruce's dreams. It is so accurately replicated, even down to the detail spots of mint paint worn away to wrought iron, that Bruce has to fight hard not to doubt his own reality. 

 

As if sensing his fear, Detective Gordon places a hand on his shoulder and squeezes comfortingly, grounding Bruce.

 

“I see it too,”

 

On the table, staring towards the slightly hazy panes of glass wet with the humidity of the arboretum and cut like floating geometric panels out of the sky, are two calling cards laid face up. The ace of hearts and- 

 

Bruce reaches for the Joker.

 

The dream of Jeremiah he clung to finally ends.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Ayy this took me ages but it's done! My first Gotham fic~
> 
> I made it (barely) before season 5 aires, which was the goal! Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed the story.
> 
> This started as a short one-shot dream and got way out of hand. I hope I conveyed just how frightening, manipulative, and deluded Jeremiah feels to me, and the disturbing extent of his obsession with Bruce. I was stuck thinking about how Bruce would process everything that has happened. How he would have to eventually come to terms with the fact that his old friend is gone, and Jeremiah is essentially irredeemable, in order to move on towards becoming Batman. 
> 
> It's something that really grabbed me watching their interactions at the end of season 4 and wouldn't let go until I exhausted it via writing. This little window in between seasons seemed like a good opportunity. I look forward to seeing what kind of moments they have in season 5! 
> 
> Please let me know your thoughts, or if you have any questions~ 
> 
> If you wanna chat about bruce & valeska twins character meta I have a tumblr under the same username (hikasho).


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